That Cat Is a Real Jewel: How Some Furry Friends Stay Precious

Pet owner Natalie Pilon turned her cat Meowy, who died after 20 years, into two blue diamonds that she set on a ring. This is Meowy's story.

By

Geoffrey A. Fowler

Dec. 4, 2012 10:31 p.m. ET

Natalie Pilon's diamond is her best friend.

Every time she looks into the ring on her finger, Ms. Pilon sees Meowy, her late beloved silver cat. Meowy really is there: The ring's two diamonds were made from her cremated remains.

"It's a little eccentric—not something everyone would do," says Ms. Pilon, a biotech sales representative in Boston, whose cat passed away last year. "It's a way for me to remember my cat, and have her with me all the time."

Americans have a long tradition of pampering and memorializing their pets. Now, technology lets precious friends become precious gems.

The idea of turning the carbon in ashes into man-made diamonds emerged a decade ago as a way to memorialize humans. Today, departed pets are fueling the industry's growth, with a handful of companies selling diamonds, gemstones and other jewelry out of pet remains, including hair and feathers.

Some gems start at about $250, while pet diamonds cost at least $1,400, with prices based on color and size. The diamonds have the same physical properties as mined diamonds, purveyors say.

LifeGem, an Elk Grove Village, Ill., company, says it has made more than 1,000 animal diamonds in the past decade, mostly from dogs and cats but also a few birds, rabbits, horses and one armadillo. Customers truly can see facets of their pets, says Dean VandenBiesen, LifeGem's co-founder, because "remains have some unique characteristics in terms of the ratios of elements, so no two diamonds are exactly alike."

More Than Friends

Americans have a long tradition of pampering and memorializing their pets. Now, technology lets precious friends become precious gems.

When her Lhasa apso Jade, shown here, died, Megan Oswald-Held collected samples of hair from Jade and three of her other dogs to make a three-quarter-carat radiant-cut diamond. Joseph Held

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Creative dog grooming has become a kind of sport. At the "Groom Expo" in Hershey, Pennsylvania, dog-owners trot out their pups, which have been dyed and clipped to resemble lions, cows, lizards, dolphins -- even Yoda.

Jennifer Durante, 42 years old, of St. Petersburg, Fla., commissioned another company, Pet Gems, to create a light-blue zircon gemstone out of remains from her teacup Chihuahua, Tetley. "It reminds me of his eyes when the sun would shine into them," she says.

Sonya Zofrea, a 42-year-old police officer in San Fernando, Calif., has two yellow diamonds to memorialize Baby, a black cat with yellow eyes who wandered into her life as a stray. The first contained a blemish, so maker LifeGem created another one free of charge with the cat's ashes. But Ms. Zofrea felt the first reminded her most of her occasionally naughty kitty. "When I saw the imperfection, I thought, that's just her," says Ms. Zofrea. "She's an imperfect little soul, aren't we all?"

A spokesman for the Gemological Institute of America declined to comment on specific companies or processes, but said that synthetic diamonds, like naturally occurring ones, are made of carbon. "That carbon could come from the remains of a deceased pet," he said.

Producing a one-carat diamond requires less than a cup of ashes or unpacked hair. Sometimes, companies add outside carbon if there isn't enough.

ENLARGE

Meowy

Fabricating a diamond speeds up what happens deep inside the earth naturally. After separating the carbon from other compounds in the remains to produce graphite, the companies put the carbon and a diamond seed crystal into a chamber with thick metal walls that heats it to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit under about 800,000 pounds per square inch of pressure. After a number of days, a rough diamond emerges that can be cut and polished.

Pet Gems, of Scituate, R.I., uses a less-expensive process that combines naturally occurring zircon stones with ashes, changing the color of the stone based on the unique chemical composition of the remains.

"The whole concept of creating a diamond from a personal source of carbon is not widely known, believe it or not," says Tom Bischoff, president of DNA2Diamonds, the American sales and distribution branch of New Age Diamonds Holding, a lab-created diamond maker located in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Customers sometimes ask the companies how they can be assured that their pets' remains are actually used to make the gems. The answer boils down to trust. "There is not a way known to man, anywhere in the world as of this time, to verify the source of carbon used to create a diamond," says Mr. Bischoff. His company sends customers a certificate with details about the unique chemical composition of their pets' ashes, and maintains a "chain of custody" log that tracks the movement of the carbon from the lab to its diamond presses in Russia.

Many owners set their memorials in rings or pendants to keep them close by. For people who have a close relationship with their pets, having a physical object like a jewel can help the grieving process, says Allen R. McConnell, a professor of social psychology at Miami University in Ohio who has studied why human-pet relationships are healthy.

Many people don't believe pets have a spiritual afterlife, he says, so "there is a really basic need that people have for permanence and to feel like death is not the end."

Phyllis Laferriere, a 67-year-old retired medical technician from Milford, Mass., finds no sadness looking at the seven zircons she has made out of her seven deceased cats. She can identify each gem, which she wears on a bracelet, by color: The light-blue one was her first cat, a golden longhair named Tyler; the amber one is Jake, a Siamese.

Living pets can make for jewels, too. Megan Oswald-Held collected samples of hair from three of her dogs, a Yorkie-poo and two Lhasa Apsos, and mixed that with a sample of hair she saved from her deceased Lhasa Apso, Jade, to make a three-quarter-carat radiant-cut diamond. The gem cost $4,700.

"It will be nice to be able to look at the ring on my hand and say there are my kids," says Mrs. Oswald-Held, 36, a paralegal from Allentown, Pa.

Mrs. Oswald-Held also made pendants called Perpetua Life Jewels out of samples of her dogs' DNA. She collected the samples by swabbing the inside of her dogs' cheeks, and then a lab separated out the DNA, colored it and put it inside a glass pendant.

After Ms. Pilon's cat Meowy died last year at the age of 20, she shipped Meowy's ashes to DNA2Diamonds. She specified two blue diamonds, which evoke the color of Meowy's eyes. She declined to say how much she spent.Ms. Pilon had the diamonds set, alongside a sapphire, into a ring she wears every day.

"It is a little bit easier to know that I had taken my sadness and turned it into something beautiful," she says.

"Meowy was kind of a little diva, so I thought two blue diamonds would be a fitting tribute."

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